DEPUTY Minister of Agriculture Seiso Moyo collapsed and died in Harare on Friday, plunging his MDC-T party into mourning.

Moyo, legislator for the Nketa constituency in Bulawayo, died on arrival at the Avenues Clinic where he was rushed to after complaining of chest pains.

The senior MDC-T official was said to have phoned colleagues asking them to take him to hospital as he felt incapacitated to drive himself.

Party spokesman Douglas Mwonzora said they suspected Moyo died of heart attack.

“It is suspected that he suffered a massive heart attack, although we have not yet seen the postmortem report, but it does look like it was cardiac arrest,” Mwonzora said.

Moyo, who was secretary for elections in his party, is survived by a wife and five children.

Mwonzora said the MDC-T had been robbed of an “astute and hardworking” man who held a “very strategic” position in the party.

“This was an extra ordinary person; he was a political gentleman, a man of peace, but at the same time a man of action. At the time of his death, he was in the process of preparing for the primary elections and the confirmations that are going to start in January,” Mwonzora added.

“Moyo was also in the election directorate preparing for the national elections, so we have lost a very strategic person, a man who was occupying a very strategic position in the party; he was very astute.”

The party was making plans with Moyo’s family late Friday for transportation of his body to Bulawayo.

“We also have not yet known when Moyo will be buried as well as the arrangements for transporting his body to Bulawayo,” said Mwonzora.

Moyo was appointed Deputy Minister of Agriculture last year to fill the position that the MDC-T had initially earmarked for self-exiled politician Roy Bennett.

The party backed down on Bennett after President Robert Mugabe refused to swear him in even after he was cleared of treason charges.